90D - any reason why 85% review score has no 'award'?

[wiwi]

Hi all,

I'm in the market for an upgrade for my 70D and have been following along with interest how people are experiencing the 90D.

One thing I'm curious about is why the DPR score of 85% has no Gold/Silver award attached to it, simply a tested badge. I could have sworn I looked a little while ago and it had a Gold award but don't hold me to that.

Apologies if this has already been covered somewhere, just interested to understand how to interpret that.

Cheers

 

[carla_francisco]

The explanation in DPR's own words:

"We've created two new awards (Gold and Silver) to replace the retiring 'Recommended' and 'Highly Recommended' gongs. There are a couple of things to know about the awards:

• They are not awarded to every camera, just those we feel deserve one
• There is no direct link between the overall score and the awards: they are not given automatically to cameras reaching a certain threshold. Crucially a camera can get an award even if a camera with a higher overall score didn't.
• In simple terms, a camera awarded a Silver is well worth considering whereas a Gold-rated one should be at or near the top of your list.

These awards are meant to be hard to achieve. If a new model raises the expected performance level for a class of camera, then that's the one you need to match to get a Gold. In other words, simply doing as well as a camera that got a Gold in the past may not be sufficient."

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4416254604/camera-scores-ratings-explained

--
"Photography isn't a hobby - it's a lifestyle"
https://www.flickr.com/photos/carlafrancisco/

 

[wiwi]

Oh thanks for that! I did try searching for that topic but clearly not hard enough!

I could have sworn when I first started looking at the 90D a few weeks ago it had a Gold Award but maybe I just dreamt that...

 

[Dave]

All that glitters is not gold.

 

[CoastalShooter]

It is strange, however, that no other camera with a review rating above 80% didn't get a Gold or Silver award since the start of 2018 (I didn't go back further). Given the improvement from its predecessor, I do find the lack of award puzzling. Oh well -- it doesn't effect how it's working for me! I do find it a huge jump forward from my 60D, with many of those improvements positively impacting the images I'm capturing. I'm giving it a gold star.

 

[THENITEOWL]

Did the reviewers do their testing with any of Canon's top glass? I'm finding that when the better Canon lenses are used that this new sensor and processor really shine.

The only complaints so far are the eye cup is not blocking light as well as the 7Dmk2 did and the shutter is too loud.

 

[Dave]

The only complaints so far are the eye cup is not blocking light as well as the 7Dmk2 did and the shutter is too loud.

Also image review delay: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4430087

 

[wiwi]

It is strange, however, that no other camera with a review rating above 80% didn't get a Gold or Silver award since the start of 2018 (I didn't go back further). Given the improvement from its predecessor, I do find the lack of award puzzling. Oh well -- it doesn't effect how it's working for me! I do find it a huge jump forward from my 60D, with many of those improvements positively impacting the images I'm capturing. I'm giving it a gold star.

Yes that’s what I was curious about - especially since I could have sworn I looked a few weeks ago and it had an award and now nothing . That’s no doubt my imagination but I was curious to see if something had suddenly come out of the woodwork to change it

 

[rdspear]

That of 93 cameras in the same category, if I counted correctly, only one has a higher score, but it doesn't receive any type of award.

If you read the Conclusion, the lack of an award wouldn't be a surprise. "Capable", "essentially unchanged". "limited coverage", "poor accuracy", "significantly softer", "solid", "not available", "sensible".

Makes me wonder how that score resulted from that review, more than the score/award mis-alignment.

 

[DavidArmenPhoto]

It is strange, however, that no other camera with a review rating above 80% didn't get a Gold or Silver award since the start of 2018 (I didn't go back further). Given the improvement from its predecessor, I do find the lack of award puzzling. Oh well -- it doesn't effect how it's working for me! I do find it a huge jump forward from my 60D, with many of those improvements positively impacting the images I'm capturing. I'm giving it a gold star.

I, too, am extremely happy with my 90D!

The reasoning DPReview staff gave for the lack of an award was essentially this:

They believed the camera was a mirrorless camera in a DSLR body. They concluded that Live View usage and especially Dual Pixel AF was better than the OVF usage and AF, especially when tracking, and most people would always be inclined to use Live View so the OVF is useless. And so in their opinion, it's a great all around camera but the fact that its' Live View is better than its' OVF makes it not deserving of an award.

I personally love both the OVF experience and shooting in Live View and i have no complaints at all since I've experienced nothing but better AF both through the OVF and in Live View than what i had with the 80D.

 

[Silvex]

The explanation in DPR's own words:

"We've created two new awards (Gold and Silver) to replace the retiring 'Recommended' and 'Highly Recommended' gongs. There are a couple of things to know about the awards:

• They are not awarded to every camera, just those we feel deserve one
• There is no direct link between the overall score and the awards: they are not given automatically to cameras reaching a certain threshold. Crucially a camera can get an award even if a camera with a higher overall score didn't.
• In simple terms, a camera awarded a Silver is well worth considering whereas a Gold-rated one should be at or near the top of your list.

These awards are meant to be hard to achieve. If a new model raises the expected performance level for a class of camera, then that's the one you need to match to get a Gold. In other words, simply doing as well as a camera that got a Gold in the past may not be sufficient."

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4416254604/camera-scores-ratings-explained

Which means the awards are totally subjective; which is fine because this isn't the camera Olympics or anything. When it comes down to it photography itself is a subjective art that is judged by personal preferences. I suppose judging the tools of the trade should be no different.

 

[Sharlin]

They believed the camera was a mirrorless camera in a DSLR body. They concluded that Live View usage and especially Dual Pixel AF was better than the OVF usage and AF, especially when tracking, and most people would always be inclined to use Live View so the OVF is useless. And so in their opinion, it's a great all around camera but the fact that its' Live View is better than its' OVF makes it not deserving of an award.

Yeah, that's honestly pretty ridiculous. As if AF tracking capability, especially the "cycling towards the camera" sort, somehow rigidly defined what you can or can't do with OVF. I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of photos taken are of more or less stationary subjects (and indeed One Shot/AF-S is by far the most common shooting mode), and for most of the rest the 90D OVF AF is more than capable of handling, as was that of the 80D, 70D, 7D, and so on.

 

[carla_francisco]

The explanation in DPR's own words:

"We've created two new awards (Gold and Silver) to replace the retiring 'Recommended' and 'Highly Recommended' gongs. There are a couple of things to know about the awards:

• They are not awarded to every camera, just those we feel deserve one
• There is no direct link between the overall score and the awards: they are not given automatically to cameras reaching a certain threshold. Crucially a camera can get an award even if a camera with a higher overall score didn't.
• In simple terms, a camera awarded a Silver is well worth considering whereas a Gold-rated one should be at or near the top of your list.

These awards are meant to be hard to achieve. If a new model raises the expected performance level for a class of camera, then that's the one you need to match to get a Gold. In other words, simply doing as well as a camera that got a Gold in the past may not be sufficient."

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4416254604/camera-scores-ratings-explained

Which means the awards are totally subjective; which is fine because this isn't the camera Olympics or anything. When it comes down to it photography itself is a subjective art that is judged by personal preferences. I suppose judging the tools of the trade should be no different.

I believe judging a tool should be anything but subjective. But hey, what do I know, right? The Canon EOS M200 just got reviewed and a Silver Award for a 79% score, so... You're the one who's probably right

--
"Photography isn't a hobby - it's a lifestyle"
https://www.flickr.com/photos/carlafrancisco/

 

[CameraCarl]

Why? It is not a Sony.

 

[Deruch0331]

the answer is easy.

1+1=3. You need a 1 or 2 to get an award.

Seems like solid math to me!

 

[jrkliny]

We tend to believe what we read. Certainly it is reasonable to expect a knowledgeable review from experts who spend their lives with camera gear and with reviews of that gear.

I am way, way more cautious in reading reviews after using the 90D and then reading the DPR review. Clearly the reviewers were not impressed and had lots of negative or at least neutral impressions. That was not my opinion, not even close. Of course, my opinions are also highly biased. I don't have $3K or more expensive cameras as a comparison. Nor am I interested in video. I rarely use or care about liveview. For my purposes, typically landscapes and macros, the 90D is clearly ahead of the competition and is first in class.

I often make relatively large prints so the class leading resolution is important to me. Except for low light conditions or rare long exposure photos, I rarely use a tripod so I appreciate the image quality I obtain handheld without mirror lockup.

The AF system works absolutely great for my purposes. Under typical still photography conditions the precision and variation of the AF is superb. For the first time I am also getting reliable AF at 1:1 macro distances. That is extremely important for my macro style of photography.

As a landscape photographer, high DR is important to me. For wildlife and other purposes I also want good performance at high ISOs. In spite of mediocre reviews from DPR, I find the 90D to be outstanding. The DPR review claimed high ISO out of camera jpegs were not as sharp as they should be. Nonsense! Canon tends to set up their camera jpeg processing to be somewhat minimal. The user can select a different picture style or make custom settings which will increase the out of camera sharpness. The reviewers did claim that high ISO noise and DR were about equivalent to the lower megapixel 80D. Again, nonsense and an example of a sloppy review. The reviewers used an initial version of Adobe ACR to process the 90D files. That software clearly did not work well when I compare the results to processing with DPP4. The 80D struggled at ISO1600, while the 90D performs well at ISO6400. The results are often even good at 12800 but sometimes I get color shifts that are difficult to correct.

There is another very important point that the reviewers completely missed. With increased megapixels, there is more of a concern about softening due to diffraction. DPP4 has a very powerful tool which is amazing in pulling details from images even at f/20 or higher. Day one with the camera I put pasted up a magazine spread and shot a 2 foot wide image at various f stops up to f/29. The results I got were exceptional. Going beyond f/20 doesn't do much to improve DOF, so that is usually the highest f stop I shoot. At f/20 with a 2 foot wide image, I was able to clearly see every letter of text and period marks on the magazine spread. I found a faint mark way smaller than a period mark and it was still clear at f/20 using the DPP4 diffraction correction. BTW, the diffraction correction was previously available but does almost nothing to improve 80D performance. Anyway, diffraction is not an issue using the 90D and DPP4 software. This is hugely important to me and not something the sloppy review even looked at.

After my direct experience and then reading the DPR review, in the future I will never put much faith in these reviews.

 

[wiwi]

Thanks for sharing your experience with the 90D!

I generally take all reviews with a grain of salt however from what you’ve said they’ve really done it a disservice .

I hope you don’t mind me asking but on an unrelated topic, how do you find the 18-135 STM vs 15-85 ? I have the 15-85 but having an additional 50mm for when I travel is of interest , however I’m afraid I would miss the 3mm at the short end.

Cheers O

 

[jrkliny]

,,,,,,,

I hope you don’t mind me asking but on an unrelated topic, how do you find the 18-135 STM vs 15-85 ? I have the 15-85 but having an additional 50mm for when I travel is of interest , however I’m afraid I would miss the 3mm at the short end.

Cheers O

I have both. I used the 15-85 as my default for quite a few years and lately have been using the 18-135. It depends on the subject matter and location but in general I prefer the 15-85 especially for landscapes and travel photography. With the 15-85, I typically do not need to carry and UWA lens. With either it is nice to also carry a 55-250.

 

[rdspear]

Thanks for sharing your experience with the 90D!

I generally take all reviews with a grain of salt however from what you’ve said they’ve really done it a disservice .

Not sure I can agree with that. One of the significant issues the review has with the camera is autofocus tracking. For sports, street, etc., photography, this is a significant issues. The poster above says it's used for landscapes, so AF tracking isn't an issue.

That's fine, and the identified weakness of the camera is not relevant to the poster, so it works for him/her. But downrating a camera for what may be a real weak point for a significant number of users isn't a "disservice" just because it doesn't apply to one set of users.

This is another reason that while camera reviews need to cover all aspects of a cameras capabilities, users then need to carefully read the review and see how the strengths and weaknesses align with their needs.

Just like the latest rave review of a Ferrari doesn't mean it's great for your 90 minute daily winter commute in traffic.

 

[DavidArmenPhoto]

I agree.

I personally think that if you want to watch reviews, those "one year later" or "few months later" reviews are the best since they provide valuable insight after the user has used the camera for a long period of time.

The announcement previews on youtube are really nothing but spec. sheets on video with some opinion added on.